Orange County

Good morning, California. It’s Thursday, March 18. Surge in anti-Asian hate Pressure is mounting on Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint an Asian American or Pacific Islander attorney general amid a surge in anti-Asian harassment and violence, including Tuesday shootings in Atlanta in which a man killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian […]

Here’s what you need to know about what happens now that the state delivered 2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to low-income communities. Thirteen counties will move to a less restrictive tier on Sunday, and some businesses will reopen on Monday.

The new system, operated by Blue Shield, aims to streamline a confusing county-by-county patchwork of vaccination efforts. “Give us a chance to make this work,” Blue Shield’s CEO said.

Although data is incomplete, in nearly all counties, white people received the largest percentage of vaccine doses — even in counties with large Latino populations. Latinos are the biggest group vaccinated in Los Angeles and two other counties.

As COVID-19 cases increase among adults, they have also increased in children, along with cases of a new inflammatory syndrome. Also like the adult population, Latino kids have borne a disproportionate brunt of the cases.

From child support to insurance fraud, court cases are delayed throughout California. Only half as many civil and criminal cases were resolved last summer compared with pre-pandemic numbers. “Justice has not shut down. Justice has slowed down,” according to an attorneys' group.

As pandemic shutdowns intensify, more than a third of jobs in three California industries that rely on events — sports, performing arts and catering — have already disappeared. And they’ve been slower to recover than the state workforce as a whole.

California’s dancers, musicians and other performers have lost their audience to a pandemic. Some may never return to the stage even when the patrons are back. Marica Kumayama Petrey had put eight months of pre-production work into the live debut for her first album with a new pop/rock band, Girl Swallows Nightingale, planned for March. […]

California voters are as diverse as its geography, from mountain ranges to valley farmland to forests and beaches. So a look at official voting results released this month shows notable differences in who turned out, how we voted, and where we voted. More than half of California’s record 17.8 million ballots cast came from just […]

California’s decision to mail a ballot to every registered voter resulted in record ballots cast in the general election — but it was poor and diverse communities that fueled the increases.